


Gravity as a Weak Force

by Fontainebleau



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 03:43:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11073360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fontainebleau/pseuds/Fontainebleau
Summary: Prompt fill: Billy and Goody in line to meet Billy's favourite author.





	Gravity as a Weak Force

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Poemsingreenink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poemsingreenink/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Crown of Creation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9803585) by [Fontainebleau](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fontainebleau/pseuds/Fontainebleau). 



> Prompt: Billy and Goody in line to meet Billy's favourite author. 
> 
> This fic follows on from [Crown of Creation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9803585), in which Billy and Goodnight are more fully characterised.

‘Who is coming?’ 

Billy looked up from the laptop shoved carelessly among the remains of dinner on the cluttered table. ‘Elizabeth Savernake-Hall, the quantum gravity woman.’ Goodnight was stacking glasses and plates in a vain attempt to create some space on the table, but Billy immediately fanned a sheaf of papers over the cleared surface. 

‘She runs a research group at the Planck Institute in Potsdam. Her work on time-evolution was groundbreaking – she proposed the hypothesis that I used in my paper on the nature of phenomenological spacetime. And now she’s coming here to talk about the quantization of space-time geometry in relation to gravitational theory.’ 

‘So when is her talk?’ Goodnight stood in the doorway to the kitchen and surveyed the chaotic living room. Nine months of living with Billy had been long enough to exhaust much of his will to tidy up, and he flopped down into an armchair, pulling an inexplicable tangle of mismatched socks out from underneath himself.

‘Friday week.’ Billy swivelled round in his chair to gaze at him affectionately. ‘But you don’t have to come and listen. It’ll be very specialised. Goody?’ 

Goodnight looked up from where he’d been distracted into shuffling those books he could reach back into line on the shelf, Billy’s German poetry beside his American classics, his graphic novels interspersed with Billy’s history of art. ‘Of course I’ll come. Seeing you in your natural habitat is a treat.’ 

It was the truth: he enjoyed experiencing the abstruse discussions that consumed Billy’s thoughts; while he couldn’t pretend to understand his research, no matter how often Billy tried to explain, he loved to see him among his peers, struggling with questions on such a grand scale and attempting to divine the theories that explain the nature of the universe.

Billy smiled tigerishly. ‘Bartholomew’s going to have to chair it: it’ll be worth being there just to see him squirm. She disproved his theory on gauge symmetries in her most recent paper, and he’s not used to proper opposition – usually he surrounds himself with that bunch of sycophants he calls a research group.’ He ignored Goodnight’s raised eyebrow; Billy’s feud with Dr Bartholomew had been simmering for some time, stemming from a single critical observation in a seminar, and culminating most recently in Bartholomew’s refusal to include a proposed paper by Billy in the programme of his colloquium, rendering him incandescent with rage. ‘Savernake-Hall won’t let him off the hook - his whole approach is ontologically unsatisfactory.’ 

Goodnight sighed inwardly. This was savage stuff, he knew. Before he met Billy his image of philosophical discussion had always been of a mild, tweedy, herbivorous debate in which nothing much was really at stake; Billy’s combative attitude to the work of his peers had come as something of a revelation, introducing him to an unguessed world of acrimonious disagreements, vitriolic criticism and a positively sadistic delight in exposing a rival’s mistakes. Early in their relationship an ill-informed, ‘But does it really matter, cher?’ had cost him three anxious nights alone before Billy relented, and a stack of ‘introductory’ books on general relativity which he struggled manfully to read but which left him little the wiser. 

‘If there’s going to be a confrontation, I’m going to be there to support you.’ _Support_? Billy believed in his theories with an iron conviction that made Goodnight slightly nervous, and made no secret that he considered attack the best form of defence; _restrain_ might be closer to the mark. 

Billy looked up again from the screen. ‘There isn’t going to be any confrontation.’ 

‘What you said last time, cher, when you squared up against that fellow from Michigan.’ 

‘That wasn’t a confrontation. It was … a frank and robust exchange of opinions.’ Billy’s lips twitched. ‘It’s the lifeblood of academia.’ 

Goodnight got up again and came to stand beside him, one hand stroking lightly at the back of his neck. ‘And there was nearly lifeblood of academia all over the carpet – I saw your gaze wandering to the knives on the buffet table. No, if you’re going to defend your ideas then I’m going to be there to help.’

\--

Gravity. It seemed all too appropriate, in an abstract way: Billy had hit him like a tidal wave, tumbling him headlong into a relationship which simultaneously elated and astonished him, and in the process had reduced his carefully-organised surroundings to a state of nature. Though Billy insisted, for reasons still opaque to Goodnight, that gravity was in fact the weakest force in the universe.

\--

Friday evening found Goodnight ready and waiting, Billy frowning in concentration in front of the mirror as he pinned up his hair. ‘What did you say her name was again?’ he asked. 

‘Elizabeth Savernake-Hall,’ said Billy. 

‘Not a common name, I’d imagine,’ said Goodnight thoughtfully. ‘Or are there a lot of them? Do you suppose?’ He closed the graphic novel he was flipping through and tossed it down on top of the stack he’d pulled out earlier. 

‘Look, are you really sure you want to sit through this?’ asked Billy, catching his eye in the mirror. 

‘Of course I do. I’ll be an asset to you.’ Billy laughed as Goodnight came up behind him. ‘You do wrong to scorn me,’ said Goodnight, arms winding around his waist, ‘I’m charming, handsome and a pillar of the local community.’ He reached to tuck a stray strand of hair behind his partner’s ear, then trailed a finger down to his collar. ‘You look ravishing.’ 

‘It’s an academic presentation, not a fashion parade,’ said Billy severely, but he twisted round in his embrace in to kiss him just the same. 

Goodnight straightened his vest for him. ‘Though quite how you manage to produce a clean ironed shirt from the rats’ nest you call a wardrobe is a mystery to me.’ 

‘It’s yours,’ said Billy with unruffled calm, opening the front door and motioning Goodnight through.

 

The distinction of the event was evident from the fact that it was being held in the shiny new Biomedical centre, all glass and steel around a central atrium planted with bamboo, rather than the unimpressive 60s concrete Philosophy department, and when they walked in they found what Goodnight had learned to count as a good-sized crowd of graduates and faculty gathered in a small lecture theatre. Billy marched them confidently down to the front row of seats, spreading out his notebook and what appeared to be a stack of research papers, his own and others’, in front of himself, while Goodnight turned himself around to survey the audience and see how many faces he could recognise. He nodded to those of Billy’s fellow philosophers of physics whom he knew; the less familiar audience members he supposed must be physicists of a philosophical outlook. 

A small hubbub of voices and activity announced the arrival of the speaker, a vague-looking woman in her fifties, shepherded by Bartholomew with oleaginous charm. The famous Professor Savernake-Hall was dressed, Goody thought privately, like a bag lady, her shapeless cardigan clashing with a garish skirt, and really, his own grandmother wouldn’t have been seen in public in such an unflattering woolly hat. She sat through the lengthy introduction listing her publications and awards seeming mildly alarmed to find herself in front of an audience, rose to her feet diffidently and then spent some time shuffling her papers and fiddling with the Powerpoint as the audience waited in expectant silence. Goodnight settled back into his seat: he had seen enough philosophers by now to know exactly what was going on here. 

‘The extension of quantum theory to general relativity, as Isham first noted, requires that we quantise not only the metric, but also the underlying differential structure and topography of spacetime.’ And suddenly Elizabeth Savernake-Hall was all solid confidence and lucidity, her delivery precise and authoritative. ‘In the canonical formulation the diffeomorphism invariance is reflected in the constraints …’ 

‘…the problem then arises that the evolution of the quantum state cannot be demonstrated. One can take as a primary example the Feynman path-integral approach…’ 

For the first ten or so minutes Goodnight had been confident that he was following the argument, but a rapid flurry of equations saw it begin to slip mercilessly from his grasp, and after a quarter of an hour he had to acknowledge that he had definitively lost the thread. Around him the audience, Billy included, were taking down notes industriously, occasionally exchanging glances at points which must be particularly controversial or profound, but there was a kind of peace in letting the theoretical talk wash over him and Goodnight let his attention wander between Billy’s hands on the pages of his notebook, long-fingered and delicate, the falling golden leaves in the glass atrium outside and the question that had been nagging at him since they left their apartment.

At the end of the talk, after a round of enthusiastic applause, the floor was opened for questions and beside him Billy’s hand immediately shot up. But Bartholomew, chairing the discussion, seemed to have an unaccountable blind spot; he passed relentlessly from one interlocutor to another, ignoring Billy’s insistently waving pen with studied inattention. Profesor Savernake-Hall herself seemed intrigued by his increasingly urgent attempts to speak and inclined to respond to him, but Bartholomew inevitably intervened to direct her attention elsewhere; Goodnight could sense Billy’s temper rising to a rolling boil, though fortunately the final applause drowned out his heartfelt hiss of _asshole_.

‘I must speak to her. I’m sure there’s a possibility of generating time-evolution without having to resort to a CMC foliation, and that would resolve some of the issues under a super-Hamiltonian formulation …’ Billy sprang to his feet as Bartholomew, followed by a little coterie of his graduate students, ushered the professor out towards the foyer where wineglasses and canapés were set out. ‘Come on.’

Priorities in order, Goodnight snagged two glasses of wine from the side table, then went to rejoin Billy as he waited impatiently for his chance to ask his questions. Professor Savernake-Hall was already surrounded by a cluster of people gesticulating animatedly, Bartholomew smiling as he introduced various of his protégés to her, and Goody could practically hear Billy grinding his teeth. ‘She can’t possibly think that McCann's work has any merit,’ muttered Billy beside him, ‘he’s admitted in print that he’s prepared to conceive of time-evolution as a wave-function, which is just a cheap trick to negate the issue of foliation wholesale.’ 

‘Savernake-Hall,’ mused Goodnight to himself. ‘Really can’t be that common.’ 

‘So you keep saying,’ asked Billy, a sharp edge of tension in his voice. ‘Why does it bother you so much?’ 

‘Well, I wonder if she knows Lexi Savernake-Hall. She must do.’ 

‘Who?’ asked Billy distractedly as they edged closer. 

‘Lexi Savernake-Hall. _Western Dreams_.’ Billy looked at him blankly, and Goodnight sighed impatiently. ‘Cher, you must remember, I gave it to you to read. It was one of the most influential graphic novels of the 2000s. You said you liked it,’ he added reproachfully. 

‘Was that the one with the Puritans who lived inside a whale?’ asked Billy, frowning slightly. 

‘No,’ said Goodnight patiently, ‘that was _Gutsville_. This is the whole series with the vampire gunslingers and the lawman who turns out to be a demon and the town founded on the site of a native massacre which eats its settlers ….’ 

‘Oh, yes,’ said Billy, ‘I do remember that. Though quite what …’ 

‘Lexi Savernake-Hall created dark Western as a genre. Took the old tradition of wagon trains and high noon shootouts and brought it lurching and shambling into the twenty-first century, you could say.’ Godnight’s voice was gradually rising as he warmed to his theme. ‘ _A Town Called Hope_ , the third volume, won the Bram Stoker prize, says a whole lot of things about how civilised society has only ever been just the thin ice on top of the lake.’ 

‘Goody!’ Billy poked at his arm urgently as Bartholomew and the rest of the knot of academics turned to look at him with blank incomprehension, but enthusiasm kept him rolling along. 

‘ _Western Dreams_ was really important in the development of the graphic novel, stands alongside _Watchmen_ and _The Dark Knight Returns_. And the depth of background detail; no one could forget that scene with Mercy Killdeer at the buffalo jump ...’ Goody finally petered out as he realised every eye was on him amid an uncertain silence. 

‘Ah,’ said a voice next to his shoulder, ‘a fan of my sister, are you? 

 

Goody looked down into the amused face of Elizabeth Savernake-Hall. ‘Your sister? Seriously? You know her? I mean, of course you must, obviously, but … really?’ 

‘And you are?’ asked the professor, offering a hand politely. 

‘Goodnight. Goodnight Robicheaux. I run a coffeeshop in town, Crown of Creation Coffee.’ A look of confusion flitted across her face, but Goodnight was oblivious, still trying to process the link between two such disparate worlds. ‘She’s really your sister? When I agreed to come and listen to the talk I never thought I’d meet ... her work is just so good…’ 

Billy said quietly behind him, ‘Goody,’ and Goodnight realised belatedly how tactless he was being. 

‘Not that your presentation wasn’t – intriguing,’ he added hastily, ‘thought-provoking …’ 

‘Oh, it’s all right,’ said Professor Savernake-Hall to Billy, ‘it happens quite a lot – Lexi’s much better-known than me. When she does book signings her fans queue round the block to meet her. They bring her art and dress up as her characters and all sorts.’ 

‘Could you-’ ventured Goodnight, caution thrown comprehensively to the winds, ‘-I mean, d’you think you could tell her, when you see her, that _Western Dreams_ is a work of genius? I mean I’m sure she knows, everyone says so, but it’s such an achievement. And her new one –‘ 

‘The one with the twin artists and the minotaur?’ interjected the professor helpfully. 

‘– Yes, that’s terrific too. I heard a rumour about it being made into a film, d’you know if that’s … ow.’ A sharp kick right on his ankle-bone snapped him back to awareness of the flinty glare directed at him. ‘Oh sorry, yes, this is Billy, my partner. Billy Rocks. Wants to know if you think he’s right about the foliation of space-time. Which he is. Obviously.’ Goody fell silent in the face of Billy’s I-can’t-even look.

‘I don’t see how he can be,’ said McCann, ‘he doesn’t give sufficient weight to the relational observables which the diffeomorphism invariance requires.’ 

Billy’s sharp intake of breath was drowned out by Bartholomew’s condescending, ‘Perhaps you should stick to discussing comics?’ and Goodnight blenched. From the corner of his eye he could see Billy slide into what Goodnight thought of as his fighting stance. 

‘There’s nothing wrong with my approach: you’re making the facile error of assuming that the geometry of space-time is a smooth continuum; the whole approach was exposed as fallacious in Belot’s paper three years ago.’ 

Professor Savernake-Hall’s clipped tones cut through Bartholomew’s intended reply: ‘If you reject the CMC foliation, Mr Rocks, then what do you propose as a solution to the problem?’ 

‘It’s obvious,’ started Billy confidently, ‘you start from the CDT model and sum all possible shapes of discretised space-time …’ 

 

The rising tide of philosophy threatened to close over Goodnight’s head, so he muttered something indistinct and retreated with as much dignity as he could muster, glass in hand, to the margins of the room. He found himself standing next to a tall spidery man perched on a radiator who nodded at him affably. ‘Retired hurt from the fray?’ 

Goodnight was forced to smile in spite of himself. ‘I don’t know if my boyfriend will ever forgive me. He’s trying to get his work taken seriously and I end up burbling to the visiting speaker about comics.’ 

‘ _Western Dreams_?’ asked the man. ‘Well, it is very good. _Into the Sunset_ , the last one, is my favourite. Very poignant.’ 

‘How do you know about it?’ asked Goodnight, feeling slightly dizzy. Was there some giant conspiracy which everyone but him was party to? 

The man grinned. ‘Lexi’s my sister-in-law. And the professor is my wife. Tom Blake.’ He held out a hand gravely. 

‘Goodnight Robicheaux,’ said Goodnight, offering his own. ‘Are you a philosopher too?’ 

‘Good lord, no, I’m a musician. I play the oboe in a baroque consort.’ 

Goodnight blinked for a moment, then rallied. ‘I run a coffeeshop, had no idea what I was getting into. One minute I was hiring a part-time barista and the next I’m sitting and listening to someone claim that spacetime is a kind of foam and gravity is the weakest force in nature. I may not be much use to him in general, but I don’t usually make things this much worse.’ 

‘No harm done that I can see,’ said Blake benevolently. ‘Nothing wrong with enthusiasm.’ He smiled sympathetically. ‘I’ve never understood a word Lizzy says at these events. All I can do is hold her coat, but she seems to appreciate it. Sometimes I think I would have liked to have a wife who ran the house for me and made my dinner, but then I see Lizzy in action and know I wouldn’t.’ He uncoiled himself from the radiator and jerked his chin over Goodnight’s shoulder. ‘I think she wants to speak to you.’ 

Goodnight felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find Professor Savernake-Hall holding out her phone with a friendly smile. ‘I told Lexi what you said, about her books, and she says thank you very much.’ 

‘Well, hey,’ said Goody, ‘that’s great.’ 

The phone pinged again. ‘And,’ said the professor, reading the message, ‘she has indeed sold the rights for the minotaur book, and she’s working on the screenplay now. She says you heard it here first.’ 

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Goodnight. 

‘Lizzy,’ said the professor. 

Emboldened, Goodnight took a deep breath. ‘I really didn’t mean to be rude. To be honest I didn’t understand too much of what you said, though it’s high-octane stuff, I’m sure.’ 

‘No reason you should: you’re not a philosopher or a physicist.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘Not a problem Lexi has. She puts her ideas out there and tens of thousands of people read them and think about them. If more than fifty scholars read my papers, I’d be surprised. I don’t imagine she finds many people saying to her, is your sister Elizabeth Savernake-Hall the philosopher?’ 

‘She will if Billy and I ever meet her, you can count on that. But seriously, the people who read your work are really committed. Billy cares, I was amazed how much. The ideas really matter to him, he doesn’t care if no one agrees with him, he’ll fight the whole world because he believes he’s right.’ 

His new friend Lizzy looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I was like that when I was younger.’ 

‘She was,’ said Blake, returning to hand her a wineglass. ‘Remember that row you had with Wertenberger in Geneva in ‘89? Turned the air blue.’ 

‘Well, he was wrong. And I was right. Only managed to prove it ten years later, but I sent him the article just the same.’ And in her satisfaction Goodnight sees a ghost of the fierce young graduate student she must have been. ‘It’s what it takes to succeed.’

They both turned towards where Billy’s argument with McCann was threatening to turn savage, Billy stabbing at his chest with his pen. ‘He’s very passionate – you’re a lucky man.’ She winked, and Goodnight felt himself blush; she laughed at his expression. ‘His ideas have potential. He should come and work with me at the Institute for a while. Give some papers, meet some people. It would be good for his career.’ 

She patted his arm before he could formulate a reply. ‘It was nice to meet you, Goodnight, but I’d better get back to the discussion before something other than pride gets damaged.’

\--

She took all three of my papers to read,’ said Billy happily as they drove home, ‘she said she thinks my underlying hypothesis is persuasive, and she said it in front of that dick Bartholomew, so he and McCann can go fuck themselves. I know I’m right.’ 

‘Of course you are, cher,’ said Goodnight, hoping that the dark would hide his anxiously tapping fingers. 

‘And you got the inside story about the screenplay, so a successful time all round.’ At Goodnight’s absent 'Mmm,' Billy turned his head. ‘Didn’t you enjoy it?’ 

‘Oh yes, it was very instructive. And they’re both charming. But …’ 

‘But what?’ 

‘She – Lizzy – said …’ started Goodnight tensely. 

‘What, Goody?’ 

Billy’s profile against the city night was heartstopping and he had to look away before he could go on. ‘She said you should go and work with her at her institute in Germany. Would you really go off to Europe for six months or a year?’ Goody knew that they both heard the silent _without me?_

Billy smiled, all enthusiasm. ‘The Planck Institute? It would be fun. You could come too.’ 

‘Could I?’ said Goodnight, taken aback. 

‘Of course you could,’ said Billy with placid cheerfulness. ‘Sam could take over the shop for a while, keep it ticking over. We might need to get married, for the visas, but that wouldn’t be a problem …’ 

Goodnight was suddenly glad that he’d fastened his seatbelt, because gravity seemed unaccountably to have ceased to function, his stomach flipping as up and down suddenly become indistinguishable.

‘… would it?’ finished Billy, briskly.

‘No, cher,’ murmured Goodnight, all at sea on the foam of space-time, spiralling helplessly inwards towards the one fixed point in his universe.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> As in Crown of Creation, almost everything in this fic is true. I will note that:
> 
> a) Christopher Carey, Professor Emeritus of Greek at UCL, is the brother of Mike Carey, author of _Lucifer_ and most recently, _The Girl with All the Gifts_. They are both really nice guys.
> 
> b) In this universe _Gutsville_ by Simon Spurrier and Frazer Irving was not cancelled after three issues, but received the appreciation it deserved.
> 
> c) Specialisms have been changed to preserve anonymity.
> 
> d) Most of the philosophy of physics discussion is drawn from _The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy_.


End file.
